Danielle E. Shipley haskindly agreed to guest post here about her work, and share her inspiration for becoming a writer in honor of her debut release coming out in 2014, Inspired.

About The Author:

Danielle E. Shipley’s first novelettes told the everyday misadventures of wacky kids like herself. …Or so she thought. Unbeknownst to them all, half of her characters were actually closeted elves, dwarves, fairies, or some combination thereof. When it all came to light, Danielle did the sensible thing: Packed up and moved to Fantasy Land, where daily rent is the low, low price of her heart, soul, blood, sweat, tears, firstborn child, sanity, and words; lots of them. She’s also been known to spend short bursts of time in the real-life Chicago area with the parents who homeschooled her and the two little sisters who keep her humble. When she’s not living the highs and lows of writing young adult novels, she’s probably blogging about it.

Long before I ever suspected I wanted to be a writer, I knew I wanted to write.

Creating characters for stories, and stories for characters, wasn’t yet a profession, passion, or even strictly a hobby. It was simply what I did. Toys needed their own voices and personalities. Drawings needed names. Words needed stringing together into narratives to make me laugh. This was life for Child Me. Only many stories later did I begin to think it could be my life in adulthood, too.

It started with a chapter book starring a tomboy preteen, her wacky friends, and wackier frenemies. I enjoyed the cast’s antics so much, I wrote a sequel. And a prequel. The list of titles grew along with the characters, whose relationships developed one poorly formatted paragraph at a time. An introduction of a new character years later prompted me to start over with a new series arc in a parallel universe. That series grew into three, with spinoffs and short stories, and the beginnings of a depth my stories had never shown much promise of before. I was growing up (a little). My writing was, too. And without quite knowing how I got there, I realized I wanted to share my creation with the world.

I wasn’t half-ready. The literary agents I queried knew that before I did. But I was in too deep, by then. If nobody wanted my first pitiful little novel, then I would write another pitiful little novel. Then a slightly less pitiful one. Then one with huge nuggets of potential gleaming amidst the kinda crummy storytelling. For years I carried on, knocking out stories like a maniac, my resolve solidifying further with every polite refusal received. I would see a book bearing my name on a public shelf. It was my dream. Until it wasn’t.

Have you ever read a character that changed your life? I did; the reading was just a little slow, because I had to write it out first. Once again, a single book grew into a series, driven by my desire to spend more time with the special people at its center. By the end of it all, I barely cared if anyone would ever know me. But I wanted them to know these wonderful fictional friends I’d found.

They needed their own voices and personalities. They needed names. They needed words strung together into lives full of joys and sorrows and of course a laugh or two. I could give them that. So that’s simply what I did. This is life for Author Me. And I may just go on doing it forever.

In the wake of his author’s sudden death, Luc takes ownership of her surviving creations—four fantastical characters with tales yet to be told—saving them from unwritten lives crumbling around them and giving them a second chance at a literary future.

Luc finds that chance in the unsuspecting mind of Annabelle Iole Gray, a quirky teen with her head in the clouds, nose in a book, and imagination ripe for a brilliant muse’s inspiration.

Or so he hopes.

Neither Luc nor Annabelle, however, realize all they’ve undertaken. Even with a to-write list including accounts of a shape-shifting cat creature, gentle knight-in-training, vigilante skater girl, and a mystery boy smothering in unspoken fear, the most remarkable saga created between author and muse just may turn out to be one stranger than fiction.